


Birds of a Feather

by AlzazelSustrai



Series: Of Swords and Spiders [1]
Category: Percy Jackson and the Olympians & Related Fandoms - All Media Types, Spider-Man (Tom Holland Movies)
Genre: (if you squint), BAMF Percy Jackson, Bisexual Peter Parker, Canon-Typical Violence, Friendship, Gen, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Peter Parker Gets a Hug, Peter Parker Needs a Hug, Poverty, not a major part of the story though
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-05
Updated: 2021-01-05
Packaged: 2021-03-15 10:15:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,341
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28561893
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AlzazelSustrai/pseuds/AlzazelSustrai
Summary: Peter Parker just wanted to see if that one nice churro vendor would give him something to eat.But, on a frigid November afternoon, there are no churro carts out.Instead, he meets a green-eyed boy who hands him a piece of blue taffy.
Relationships: Percy Jackson & Peter Parker
Series: Of Swords and Spiders [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2147412
Comments: 22
Kudos: 270





	Birds of a Feather

_Who would build a flock of murder pigeons?_

Peter perches on the roof of an old warehouse, watching hundreds of bronze birds the size of small cats swarm around the square. They seem agitated, flying around on some complex AI algorithm that somehow captured the flock-like tendencies and random movements of birds. What he wouldn’t do to get his hands on that code…

An old man hobbles into the square, half-blind with age and leaning heavily on a cane. There is a terrible shrieking of metal as, in synchrony, the entire flock turns their polished heads towards the man.

Peter immediately moves. He swings down and picks the old man up and away, taking him safely away from the birds. 

Theoretically.

The old man tenses when Peter grabs him, but clearly recognizes Spider-Man, and relaxes. It makes it quite simple to lift him in the air and escape from the automated birds.

And then something in his mind screams a warning, and Peter lets go of the web. He drops, something having sliced through the gossamer strands. Over his head, something flies through the air, narrowly missing the top of his mask. 

In front of him, a metal feather has embedded itself halfway into the side of a building, cutting four inches into solid brick.

“That’s really dangerous!” Peter yells, shooting another web just before he touches the ground. 

That web is promptly sliced through by a flurry of mechanical feathers, and Peter feels the impact of the fall shudder through his legs. 

The shrieking behind him increases, and his mind tells him desperately to move, but he can’t, not when there’s an old man here, if he moves then the projectiles will surely hit him, but if he doesn’t it’ll be Peter’s own back that will be stabbed, and–

The whistling of air has never sounded so much like a death knell. Peter curls around the old man, as much as he is able, and waits for pain.

_Clang._

The discordant sound of metal-on-metal chimes merrily, and the pain never comes. Peter jerks his head around to see someone standing between him and the flock.

The person is tall, a faded orange shirt hugging his shoulders but hanging loose everywhere else. It’s a familiar shirt. Peter’s attention is drawn to the sword in his hand– it shimmers in the light, almost glowing with a haziness about it. 

“Get out of here, I can take care of it!” the man says, flipping the sword in his hand casually. Bits of bronze gleam on the ground– feathers, sliced cleanly through. Peter can’t seem to make his feet move.

Then, the person looks back at Peter and, under ink-black bangs, his eyes widen.

“You’re Spider-Man!” Percy Jackson says.

…

**[About seven years ago]**

Peter’s hungry and cold and so very tired. Aunt May is working tonight, and Uncle Ben got home and fell dead asleep, exhausted from the day, but there is no food in the house and he knows that they can’t afford to turn on the heater. So, he’s found his way to the area near the Empire State Building, where sometimes the churro vendors will take pity on a scrawny school boy and give him one for free, and where sometimes he runs into some other boys in the same situation and they share their spoils and body heat.

Most of them are younger than he is, but they’re always willing to share half a bagel or an unopened candy bar.

Today, there are no churro vendors, and the streets are practically deserted– November in New York is frigid, and Peter’s breath billows out in plumes.

He turns around– his blankets will do for today, he thinks– and nearly runs into another boy.

He’s older than Peter is by just a few years– probably barely in middle school, if that. His hands are puppy large and his proportions speak of recent growth. He’s in, horrifically, a t-shirt– which in this weather is very ill-advised– but his thin arms are surprisingly strong, steadying Peter before he can fall over.

Dark brows furrow over intense green eyes as the boy looks over Peter. “You too?” he asks gently.

Peter just shrugs. The boy holds his gaze, which scares Peter a little– older street boys are normally not as nice as the younger ones, too jaded to expect that people can share, and this one has definitely gone through some things.

Then, he blinks and reaches into his pocket to pull out a handful of taffy.

“It won’t fill your belly but it will trick your mouth into being busy,” the boy says, surprisingly gently. “I only have blue taffy, though I don’t know why you’d want any other color.”

“Blue’s… blue’s good.” Peter manages, more than a little bewildered at the kindness. He accepts a piece of taffy, which is a bright, electric blue, and puts it in his mouth. It’s almost cloyingly sweet, with the fake-fruit flavour that so many candies have, and it is quite possibly the best thing he’s ever eaten. 

Before long, they’re sitting on a bench, Peter indecently close to the older boy as he shivers. Curiously, he doesn’t seem to notice the cold– he radiates warmth that Peter can feel through his thin sweater.

Hesitantly, Peter offers, “I’m Peter, by the way.” He does not offer a last name. They never do.

He’s given a lopsided grin in return. “Percy.” His teeth are faintly tinted blue– clearly, he’d also been eating the taffy.

Peter smiles back, one cheek puffed out with candy, and leans ever so slightly closer to Percy. 

It’s so much warmer here, and Percy wraps an arm around Peter’s trembling shoulders. It’s warm, and it feels safe, and the candy in his mouth soothes his stomach’s complaints. 

Peter’s next blink comes languidly, and he draws his knees up. Maybe he can sit here a little longer. Just a little bit longer. Another minute, maybe.

…

Peter is gently shaken awake, warmer than he’s been in weeks. A voice, in the awkward not-high pitch of prepubescence, says, “Hey, Peter, sorry, but I gotta get going. I gotta be home before my stepdad notices I’m not there.”

Peter wakes up a little more when he realizes that he’s still on a bench in front of one of the biggest tourist attractions in Manhattan, practically curled up against the side of his new friend. He feels a flush crawl up his face, and extricates himself from the warmth. He kind of regrets it, but his embarrassment forbids him from going back.

“Sorry for falling asleep,” he whispers. Percy shrugs easily, getting off the bench.

“Don’t worry, it looked like you needed it. Do you have a place to go?” There’s no judgement in his eyes.

Peter nods. “I just came out because I wanted some food. I’m good now.” He really almost is good now– the gnawing ache in his stomach has abated somewhat.

Percy frowns at him. “When do you gotta be home?” He asks. His eyes scan Peter’s body then, narrowing at exposed skin as if looking for something.

For the first time, Peter notices the bruises on Percy’s arms, circling around his biceps in dark rings, and his stomach drops. He can guess why Percy’s wandering outside on a cold November evening, now. 

He waves his arms frantically. “No, it’s not like that!” Peter looks at the ground, vaguely ashamed. “We just… don’t have a lot of money, is all. My aunt is working until early in the morning, and my uncle sleeps like a rock– I don’t really have to be home at all.”

Percy’s frown deepens. “Come on, then.” He takes Peter’s wrist, the heat traveling up his arm like a caress, and pulls him away. 

Percy is a professional at hitching rides, Peter discovers, as they cling onto the backs of buses and dodge disgruntled paying customers. They pass Central Park, and then Percy takes them into a residential neighborhood.

“Do you trust me?” Percy asks, his eyes earnest and soft.

Peter nods.

Percy points at a window. “Go up the fire escape to that apartment, and stay out of sight. Don’t go inside. I’ll go in the normal way– just wait for me, okay?”

Percy helps him up, then disappears into the building. Peter is small, even for his age, so he sits on the fire escape, hidden beneath the window. For a moment, he feels a flash of fear– what if Percy had lured him here for something wicked?– but he rationalizes that, if the older boy had wanted to hurt him, he would have done so when Peter had fallen asleep.

All of a sudden, there’s a shout from inside the apartment, and Peter flinches, his head hitting the brick behind him.

He can’t hear what’s being said, but it is loud and scares him. A door slams, and Peter curls up a little tighter.

Then, the window opens, and Peter nearly wets himself.

“Peter?” It’s Percy. Relieved, Peter uncurls and twists around. The green-eyed boy is leaning out the window, holding out a roll of bread. There are two pieces of sandwich meat draped on top.

“Sorry I couldn’t bring more. You should probably go,” he whispers. Peter stares at the food, before tremulously taking it.

“Thank you.” His voice is nearly inaudible, but Percy nods. 

“I’ll see you around,” Percy says, before shooing Peter off the fire escape.

It’s a long walk home, without Percy’s deft abuse of the public transportation system, but Peter spends it nibbling on the roll of bread. He eats an entire slice of sandwich meat.

And then, he remembers that May will get food during her shift, and maybe it would be alright to eat all of this.

Peter gets home empty-handed, and falls under his threadbare blankets with his stomach full and heart fuller.

…

The next time Peter sees Percy, he’s found himself a skateboard and he’s whizzing through Central Park, not doing any tricks, just enjoying the speed. It’s only been a few months, but it looks like Percy’s gotten a bit taller, his hair shaggier and his pants higher on his ankles.

Percy spots him and they sit and talk. Aunt May’s doing well, Uncle Ben’s recently gotten a promotion, and they’ve had plenty to eat. Percy seems very relieved when Peter tells him this.

In return, Percy tells Peter about his mother, who seems rather unrealistically good. Still, Peter sits and listens to a son’s genuine love and appreciation, and is comforted by it. 

He does not talk about his stepdad. Peter doesn’t ask.

…

The third time Peter talks to Percy, he’s irrepressibly happy.

“Peter!” Percy shouts, startling him out of his trek from school.

His eyes glitter in the sun, alight and as clear as the Carribean ocean. He’s got a healing cut on one cheek, and a very dark bruise on his forearm, but none that are distinct shapes.

He speaks in an incomprehensible rush of words, syllables tripping over each other in his excitement, but Peter can pick out only that he is boundlessly happy.

Peter can only grin back, buoyed by Percy’s infectious high spirits.

“And now we don’t have to deal with Smelly Gabe and we can leave and–” Percy’s voice cracks partway through the sentence, and he pauses to clear his throat.

“Anyways, you wanna come and meet my mom?”

Sally Jackson has a tray of bright blue cookies and even brighter blue eyes, and manuscripts litter the table in the corner.

Peter likes her. He doesn’t know any decent human who wouldn’t.

…

Shortly after, Percy and his mother move to another apartment, and Peter doesn’t see him roaming the streets anymore. 

Percy’s taken to wearing orange, and sometimes Peter will see him around, on a skateboard or near the Rockefeller center. Every time, it seems like Percy’s gotten taller, more muscular.

One time, Peter thinks he can see the shiny-silver of scar tissue decorating his arms. 

Percy never seems to notice Peter anymore– he’s always with someone else, roaming around, walking through the streets as though he’s entirely unafraid of anything New York could possibly throw at him.

…

And then Uncle Ben dies, and everything falls apart.

At least Aunt May doesn’t have to pay for high school– Peter got into Midtown High on an academic scholarship, which includes the lunch meal. 

He can’t bring himself to celebrate.

…

Right before the beginning of the school year, there is a span of time in mid-August when everyone just… falls asleep.

Peter wakes one morning to see beasts roaming the streets, and absolutely no hysteria. It’s as if the city that never sleeps simply, well, fell asleep. He peers out his window at all manner of monster, and thinks with terror back to the Chitauri invasion, and locks the door. 

Halfway through the day, he grows drowsy, and when he wakes, the world is normal.

But some days, he remembers. He remembers dark, hulking creatures, remembers fur and scales and feathers and fire, just barely obscured by a gold-bronze haze. He remembers scorched furrows in the concrete, scored by the massive claws of a dragon, shimmering through a misty cloud that wouldn’t dissipate in the sunlight nor in the breeze.

(Sometimes, out of the corner of his eye, he notices little things that feel odd. Wasn’t that statue of Lincoln standing up straight? Why is one of the knees on a bevel now? Peter doesn’t know if he wants to know the answer.)

…

Percy disappears. Peter had rarely seen him in recent years, but he’d been around– every few months, he’d pop up in the periphery, tall and broad and devastatingly handsome. The last time they’d spoken– just after midterms in Peter’s eighth grade year, he’d hardly been able to pay attention to what he’d been saying, caught up in the fact that he’s probably nearly six feet tall by now, and broad like a swimmer, and his voice is low and smooth and–

Nope. Not going there.

But he’d been around. But now, it has been half a year without a glimpse of black hair, and Peter is worried.

And then he is bitten by a spider, and there are more things to worry about.

…

**[Present Day]**

Peter stares in shock at the boy in front of him, at the face that had been missing for over two years now. He’s very tall now, the baby fat having fallen off of his face in the intervening time, but there is a thinness to his arms and chest that speak of starvation, that remind Peter of the months after the spider and before Tony Stark, when no amount of food was enough.

The warm green eyes from Peter’s memory are hard and haunted by something that Peter can’t place– implacable and stormy.

“Right, well, I’ll be back, I’ll just–” Peter stammers out, and quickly scoops the old man up and away. As he leaves, he hears the murder birds screech, but Percy yells something in an unfamiliar language and they somehow turn all their attention on him.

He sets the man down three blocks over, then hurries back. 

Percy is unscathed when he returns, hacking apart birds with that sword as if he’d been doing it all his life.

Peter knows the moment Percy spots him– his instincts blare a warning, as if he’d just been spotted by a predator, but it’s Percy, the smiling skater boy who’d shared a bread roll with him.

But Peter can’t quite reconcile the smiling, happy Percy who he’d had an ill-begotten month-long crush on with the person slicing through a flock of bronze crows with an casual nonchalance.

“Hey Spider-Man, wanna lend a hand?” Percy calls, sword carving a graceful arc through the air.

“What can I do?” Peter yells back, hoping that Percy couldn’t catch the tremor in his voice.

Percy hums nonchalantly, even as he whirls around and deflects a hail of feather-arrows with his sword.

“What even are they?” Peter asks, half-under his breath. 

Percy, somehow, hears him, and his pensive expression pulls into a frown. “They’re Sym- uh, stim- stuh- ah, whatever. They’re Greek murder crows, that’s all you really need to know. I’m trying to remember how we got rid of them last time.”

“Last time?” Peter yelps.

Percy nods, then snaps his fingers. “I got it! Loud noises! You got anything for that, Spider-Man?”

“I-” Peter, starts, contemplative. “I think we could hit things? Like the statues?”

For some reason, Percy winces, but he nods. “Find something that’ll be loud then, eh?” He suggests, casting a meaningful look at Peter’s fabric-clad fists. “I’ll hold them off a while longer.”

Peter thinks that Percy could probably wipe out the whole flock by himself, judging by the twitching mechanical bodies that he’s wading through.

Nonetheless, Peter manages to find a pipe, and he and Percy spend the next few minutes hitting the hollow statue in the center of the park, ringing out metallic clangs.

The birds fly frantically around when the cacophony increases– ironic, in Peter’s opinion, because the squeaking and screeching that they produce is arguably just as bad– but he doesn’t complain as the birds gather together and fly off into the sky.

There are dozens of mechanical corpses on the ground, but Peter blinks and suddenly, they’re but golden dust that scatters in the wind.

“Thanks, Spider-Man.” Percy says, eyes softening to tropical-shallow green instead of the dark color they were before. He feels more familiar like that– less liable to slit someone’s throat and more likely to pull out a handful of candy.

“Where have you been?” Peter bursts out, heedless of his volume or propriety.

“What?” Percy blinks in confusion, looking almost innocent despite the massive, razor-sharp blade in his hand.

Peter grabs the neck of the mask, his concern driving his need to check in on Percy, but he’s stopped by an iron grip around his wrist.

“Spider-Man, what are you doing?”

“Percy, I just, I need–”

His eyes hardened as soon as Peter said his name. Percy pulls them both into an alleyway, left hand on Peter’s wrist, right hand holding that bronze sword ready.

“Who are you, Spider-Man, and why do you know who I am?” Percy growls, his voice triggering something primal and terrified in Peter. He’d never been afraid of him before, but now, everything in his skull was screaming at him to get away now predator leave run survive.

“Wait wait wait okay I’m taking my mask off okay? Okay?” Peter yelps, heedless of how high his voice squeaks.

Percy’s eyes narrow, but he lets go of Peter’s wrist.

Frantically, he tears off his mask and holds both hands up. 

“Percy, Percy, it’s me, it’s Peter!”

Peter can see the exact moment that Percy recognizes him. The wolfish, half-feral look fades from his eyes, and he lets go of Peter and steps back. The terrifying aura dies to a simmer– Peter’s senses stop blaring warnings at him. 

“Peter?” Percy squints at him incredulously– it has been a number of years since they’d spoken face to face, after all.

He waves awkwardly. Percy lunges at him, and Peter nearly punts him into the air, but Percy just pulls him into a hug.

It’s… warm. Peter’s been running cold for a long time now, but Percy’s always exuded heat like a furnace.

He pulls away and digs his fingers into Peter’s hair, mussed from the suit and mouse-brown.

“Peter, you’re looking good! Getting enough to eat these days?”

“Yeah, actually, I got an internship and–” Peter realizes that he’d gotten sidetracked. He pulls away from the hand ruffling his hair and jabs a finger into Percy’s chest.

“Hold on, can we go back to my question? Where have you been?” Peter demands. His voice is _not_ trembling, thank you.

Percy slings an arm around Peter’s shoulders.

“How ‘bout we go back to my mom’s apartment and we can talk, _Spider-Man_?”

Peter winces. They’re both going to have a lot of explaining to do.

**Author's Note:**

> And then Percy has to explain to Annabeth that he's friends with Spider-Man. That conversation is a rough one, but when she meets Peter, everything turns out fine.
> 
> I've been sitting on this fic for months, and I just decided to post it bc I lost motivation to keep drawing it out. If there are any stories in this verse you'd like to see, comment it! If it inspires me, maybe this will turn into a series.


End file.
